After going
unscathed through several hurricanes in the past,
Mollie McDermott ’06, from Mandeville, Louisiana, says
she was in denial that Katrina was going to hit. She left for
school before
the storm came since she had to be on campus for orientation.
Her parents evacuated at the last minute when the magnitude
of the
storm became clear. In Mandeville, which is on the north shore
of Lake Pontchartrain, directly across from New Orleans, McDermott
says the extent of damage goes by the rule of three: one in
three houses is fine, one has some damage, and one is in bad
shape.
Her family was one of the lucky ones.

McDermott and
a friend stayed in Baltimore the night after the hurricane hit. “We
were almost celebrating because the levees didn’t break.
The next morning, everything completely changed. That’s
when I started madly trying to call people.” It
would be almost a week before she talked to her parents,
who left Louisiana and went to Arkansas. McDermott’s
father went back to help FEMA with the rescue effort, staying
in the
family’s
home and receiving emergency rations. Her mother is now back
in Mandeville as well. “We’re extremely lucky,” McDermott
said. “I don’t know anyone else whose house is
fine.” One
of the hardest things for her is that her family is now scattered
all over the country. And some aren’t going back. “I’m
used to having my family all in one place. Christmas will
be such a different experience,” McDermott said. On
a grander scale, her biggest concern is that the city won’t
ever come back. “Those
who can go back and rebuild have money," McDermott said. "Those
without money can’t move back. And it’s just
as much their home.”

McDermott is
the cochair of the student organization CAUSE, a community service
group that
already has several fundraisers
in the works.
They have donation bins set up in all academic and administrative
buildings on campus, and they’re having a craft sale
September 14–16 and a bake sale September 21–23,
both in Blanchard Campus Center. They are also planning
an organization competition,
where student organizations will compete against each other
to raise as much money as they can in one day.

McDermott
is grateful for the outpouring of concern from the community. “The
support on campus has been stellar,” she said. “I’m
lucky to be here, be safe, and be in a position to help.”

Katy
Smith's Story

Katy
Smith '06 from Jackson, Mississippi,
reflected on her experience with Hurricane Katrina at the
9/11 Vigil on Abbey Green.

The first thing
I’d like to say is that I
don’t even
have a right to be here, among you all. I’m from Jackson,
Mississippi, where all the people count their blessings every day
because they escaped the worst of it. Trees fell, roofs were damaged,
power lines came down everywhere. But only one woman died. So it’s
ridiculous to describe my suffering, since thousands of people
south of Jackson have lost their homes, their jobs, their loved
ones, and in some cases, their dignity.

So what I can
tell you that would be new? Perhaps few of you have personally
seen a convention
center overflowing with evacuees,
cramped into a foreign city and entirely dependent on the kindness
of strangers. Perhaps few of you have seen truckloads of dogs
who have been swimming in contaminated water for days in cages
stacked
above their drowned companions. These are horrible things to
see, but with the utter despair comes the highest kind of hope.
My home
lost power for over a week, and with the shortage of gas and
no way to prepare or refrigerate food, we ended up eating crackers
and dry cereal for most of our meals. For the first few days,
I
complained. But I quickly realized that the city was rising to
its feet in the midst of its difficulties, in a way that I’m
sure will be echoing along the completely devastated Mississippi
Gulf Coast and the swamped New Orleans.

The morning
after the hurricane hit, my mother and I took a walk in the streets
of
our neighborhood. Under a perfectly benign
blue sky, everyone was already in their yards, raking, picking
up, sorting,
arranging fallen limbs into manageable piles. As we picked
our way through the downed trees and power lines, we spoke with
neighbors
we’d never met before, and everyone had the same words
on their tongues. For an entire week, Jackson only spoke Katrina,
and it managed to connect us in a way nothing had before. For
a
week, we stopped talking about politics or the economy or the
city gossip. We started instead to speak of what needed to
be done,
right then. Our shelters were overwhelmed with donations. Our
Red Cross couldn’t take any more volunteers. Our local
TV stations would post needed supplies on the bottoms of their
screens, and
I was told that whenever a new item was posted, the need was
completely filled within an hour. The poorest among us gave
everything they
could, and the wealthiest gave proportionately. Native Mississippian
John Grisham gave $5 million—more than initial donations
from the NBA, Major League Baseball, and Wal-Mart combined.

I’ve never loved my state the way I did that week, and
it was very difficult to return to a land where people talk
about
normal things, everyday things. I think the worst possible
result would be for people to forget, because the one million
displaced
Southerners will need the strongest support this nation can
give for years to come. They won’t forget because they
can’t,
and I think it’s presumptuous to assume that any of us
should be able to forget. I still have nightmares every single
night,
so I can’t imagine what those who went through the worst
of it are dreaming of. My mother is volunteering with the Red
Cross, and a few days ago, she met an evacuee who worked as
a tour guide
in New Orleans. At the end of their conversation, he told her
that when she visited New Orleans in a year, he’d give
her the best tour of the city she’d ever have. It’s
hope and memory that will pull us through—belief in the
future and remembrance of the past. So what do we do in the
present? Be thankful
every day for our health, our safety, our friends, our neighbors,
and donate every penny we can spare to the relief effort.

Devi
Yalamanchili's Story

Devi Yalamanchili’s
home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, suffered a lot of wind damage
from Katrina, but she said her family was
lucky because they had no flooding. She too has been through
several storms that threatened the city but never hit her home. “We
didn’t even think it would hit New Orleans,” she
said. Her home was without power for a week, and cell phones
didn’t
work, so it was several days before she could track down friends
who were attending Tulane University and the University of New
Orleans and who had been forced to find alternative plans for
the fall semester.

Yalamanchili
changed her flight from New Orleans to Baton Rouge
and arrived at Mount Holyoke safely, although her parents’ car
is still stuck at the New Orleans airport. The firsthand accounts
she has heard from friends have been heart wrenching.

"They
say it was chaos. The National Guard would pass up people’s
houses, so they started shooting," Yalamanchili said. "Their
families were dying. They were starving. There was no clean
water.” And
the worst part, Yalamanchili said, is that the poorest parts
got hit the hardest.
Baton Rouge is now seeing an influx of evacuees looking for
homes and jobs. Her father is a medical doctor with clinics
in nearby
towns and has been offering free services to evacuees.

Her
friends at MHC had no idea if she was OK until they spotted her
on campus. “They were so happy to see me,” Yalamanchili
said. As for the city that she loved and where she went all
the time with friends, she’s not sure what’s going
to happen. “I
don’t think it’s possible to rebuild the city
to what it was before. There’s no city left.”